Canadian Business Wag Has No Business Talking Science

Canadian Business Wag Has No Business Talking Science

“An issue as important as global warming should not descend into a shouting match between the faithful and the heretical.”

That was the subhead in the print version of Jack Mintz’s March 17 column in Canadian Business and, up to that point, he was making pretty good sense. But then Mintz took to shouting about the heretical Dr. David Suzuki, a man who continues to infuriate certain segments of Canadian society and, especially, Canadian media by honouring science over the theology of unlimited Alberta oil exploitation.

Then Mintz says this, “Not being an expert in modelling climate change, I cannot pass judgment on the quality of the research involved.” Again, so far so good. But in the very next sentence, Mintz leaps directly into ill-informed judgment, saying “But it is clear there is some room for scientific disagreement ….”

Clear to whom?

After a long aside about the imperfections of Keynesian economic theory, Mintz comes back to the climate change question by dragging up the old hockey stick. Loyal DeSmog readers will know all aboutDr. Michael Mann’s 1999 climate reconstruction graph – a graph that, Mintz says, “inspired a profound belief that temperature trend lines were shaped like a hockey stick – flat for a long time, then a sharp increase in recent years due to carbon emissions.” In a counterpunch widely celebrated in denier circles, two Canadians – an economist and a mining promoter – argued, in Mintz’s words, that “Mann’s data and statistical methodology were flawed, disproving one of the most important arguments at the time in favour of carbon-induced global warming.” (My emphasis.)

This is either intentionally untrue or flagrantly ill-informed. The narrow debate about Michael Mann’s statistical method did nothing to discredit the climate reconstructions on which he based his work. Neither has anyone done anything to question the validity of all the other climate reconstruction results illustrated at left (and explained here). For that matter, if you follow the black line (the actual temperature since reliable record-keeping began), you begin to see a curve that looks more like a rocket trip than a hockey stick.

Mintz concludes his logical meanderings by once again trying to sound reasonable. “… it should be left to the scientists to sort out what ideas hold up through empirical verification,” he says. “This is the essence of good science, and we should make sure we don’t undermine its important process.”

Seeing how clumsily an ill-informed economist like Mintz blunders around this issue, we could hardly disagree.

So who is James Hoggan? He’s a public relations man, based in Vancouver. His firm, James Hoggan and Associates, is positioned as a feel-good local operation with clients in all the “right” public and private sectors. He also sits on the board of the David Suzuki Foundation.

One of his side efforts is a blog operated out of Hoggan and Associates. Funded by retired Internet bubble king John Lefebvre, the blog has one full-time and three or four part-time staff. They spend their time tracking down and maliciously attacking all who have doubts about climate change and painting them as corporate pawns.

There has been no mention on the blog, nor on The Fifth Estate, of James Hoggan’s client list. They include or have included the National Hydrogen Association, Fuel Cells Canada, hydrogen producer QuestAir, Naikun Wind Energy and Ballard Fuel Cells. Mr. Hoggan, in other words, benefits from regulatory policy based on climate change science.

But it is as a climate commentator that Mr. Hoggan gets carried away. On The Denial Machine, Mr. Hoggan is allowed to go on at some length about how climate skeptics are not true scientists, are not qualified, or have no expertise.

That takes some gall. Here’s a totally unqualified small-town PR guy making disparaging comments about scientists he says are unqualified while he lectures the rest of us on the science. “If you look in the scientific literature, there is no debate,” he tells Mr. McKeown. It doesn’t seem to bother Mr. McKeown that Mr. Hoggan has no expertise. It is also a little rich to have a member of the Suzuki Foundation board pronounce other scientists unfit and unqualified for climate assessments, while geneticist David Suzuki roams the world issuing barrages of climate change warnings at every opportunity.

The narrow debate about Michael Mann’s statistical method did nothing to discredit the climate reconstructions on which he based his work.

The debate was not narrow, but central to the validity of MBH. Whether the reconstructions Mann based his work on are credible is a moot point; Mann’s work is what has been questioned.

Neither has anyone done anything to question the validity of all the other climate reconstruction results …

Using a wider variety of temp reconstructions from the peer reviewed literature produces a much different reconstruction of past temperatures. Only showing temp reconstructions that agree with each other is a form of “cherry picking” and should be avoided.

Whenever the Stick is mentioned, it is always as a source of controversy nowadays. Can’t find it on Suzuki’s website, can’t find it on the Greepeace website and it has greatly diminished status in the IPCC report. Once the unis get their new textbooks, the Stick will likely get a lot less mention there also.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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In Part II of our intimate interview with Professor Michael Mann he tells of the exact moment he fully acknowledged humans were driving climate change – and how his conversion was thanks to the invention of the colour printer. Read Part I here. The interview forms part of our Epic History of climate denial.

Michael Mann, the scientist behind the climate change hockey stick graph, began his PhD at the...